Imperialus
Explorer
Ok, so here's the deelio.
Round the end of the month here I'm going to try and kick off a new campaign. It's gonna be my first attempt at running 4E and my first attempt at running D&D is probably about 5 years.
At any rate to get myself back in the groove (and to hopefully improve my DMing skills) I've been reading the 'running commentary' threads for both Pcat and Rel, and have also stolen liberally from them. The other big inspiration is The Witcher computer game.
I'm also converting/reskinning the First Ed adventure 'Cult of the Reptile God,' adding a slightly darker twist to it and hopefully drop in a plot hoot that could get them a little bit closer to the recovery of the rituals used by the Grey Wardens prior to the civil war when they were stolen. Anyhow, that's not what I'm hugely concerned about. That's a ways off.
More immediate concern is converting N1.
Basically the PC's get the contract from their commanding officer. He basically gives them a cell phone ritual, tells them to call him if they need help and then drops out for now. Maybe he'll rejoin them at some point, right now he's just a talking head.
Anyhow he sends them off to figure out what's going on in a village of halflings located in a swamp to the north.
This is the first big change. Rather than being a bunch of happy agriculturalists with hundreds of gold pieces stuffed in their drawers in the module they live and work in the swamp, making a living selling plants and other stuff from the swamp for use in everything from ritual ingredients to dyes and folk remedies, possibly even drugs but that depends on how much I rip off from The Witcher.
Anyhow. I'm tossing the idea of having all the cultists living in and amongst the other villagers. A community would be too tight knit for something like that to happen. Instead we've got two halfling clans, plus a clan of Lizardmen, who until quite recently managed to co-exist quite peacefully. The Lizardmen would trade particularly hard to find ingredients for metal tools and weapons and they would generally come to one anothers aid when they saw each other in trouble.
The two halfling clans were cool towards each other, The larger clan lives towards the edge of the swamp on a relatively dry island while the smaller one survived quite a bit deeper inside.
Anyhow about six months ago the lizardmen became decidedly less friendly. They stopped trading and before much longer there was evidence of them attacking and killing or kidnapping halfling gatherers and hunters.
A band of halflings went to the lizardmans village but found it abandoned and were attacked on their way home. Several were killed and the chief of the smaller clan was kidnapped. Now strange things are happening in the smaller clan. They've become standofish and hostile. They've stopped selling their herbs to the traders who live in the larger clan and herb gatherers have reported seeing them watching them when they're in the swamp.
Needless to say this scared the
out of the larger clan and they contacted the Wardens to try and solve the problem.
This is where the PC's come in.
Anyhow, if you've made it though that wall of text here's my questions.
I need to think of a way for the small clan halflings to come across as weird and creepy but not outright hostile. My players tend to have itchy trigger fingers.
Also, I'm thinking of reskinning Kobolds to serve as grunt lizardmen. I need some minions. The slingers work, especially their special shots since it's easy enough to explain them as weird swamp ingredients. Swap the firepot for an acidpot maybe.
Do you see any problems with the plot so far? Like I said, it's my first time GMing D&D in a long while.
Anyhow, thanks for putting up with me. A big chunk of this is just me putting ideas to paper... or rather screen and seeing how they look typed out. I've got some time before the group will be back together so there's lots of time for tweaking.
*edit* oh and also, how much do you think a lot of difficult/challanging terrain would affect the group if they were being attacked by primarily ranged fighters? At least make it worth 100XP?
Round the end of the month here I'm going to try and kick off a new campaign. It's gonna be my first attempt at running 4E and my first attempt at running D&D is probably about 5 years.
At any rate to get myself back in the groove (and to hopefully improve my DMing skills) I've been reading the 'running commentary' threads for both Pcat and Rel, and have also stolen liberally from them. The other big inspiration is The Witcher computer game.
I'm also converting/reskinning the First Ed adventure 'Cult of the Reptile God,' adding a slightly darker twist to it and hopefully drop in a plot hoot that could get them a little bit closer to the recovery of the rituals used by the Grey Wardens prior to the civil war when they were stolen. Anyhow, that's not what I'm hugely concerned about. That's a ways off.
More immediate concern is converting N1.
Basically the PC's get the contract from their commanding officer. He basically gives them a cell phone ritual, tells them to call him if they need help and then drops out for now. Maybe he'll rejoin them at some point, right now he's just a talking head.
Anyhow he sends them off to figure out what's going on in a village of halflings located in a swamp to the north.
This is the first big change. Rather than being a bunch of happy agriculturalists with hundreds of gold pieces stuffed in their drawers in the module they live and work in the swamp, making a living selling plants and other stuff from the swamp for use in everything from ritual ingredients to dyes and folk remedies, possibly even drugs but that depends on how much I rip off from The Witcher.
Anyhow. I'm tossing the idea of having all the cultists living in and amongst the other villagers. A community would be too tight knit for something like that to happen. Instead we've got two halfling clans, plus a clan of Lizardmen, who until quite recently managed to co-exist quite peacefully. The Lizardmen would trade particularly hard to find ingredients for metal tools and weapons and they would generally come to one anothers aid when they saw each other in trouble.
The two halfling clans were cool towards each other, The larger clan lives towards the edge of the swamp on a relatively dry island while the smaller one survived quite a bit deeper inside.
Anyhow about six months ago the lizardmen became decidedly less friendly. They stopped trading and before much longer there was evidence of them attacking and killing or kidnapping halfling gatherers and hunters.
A band of halflings went to the lizardmans village but found it abandoned and were attacked on their way home. Several were killed and the chief of the smaller clan was kidnapped. Now strange things are happening in the smaller clan. They've become standofish and hostile. They've stopped selling their herbs to the traders who live in the larger clan and herb gatherers have reported seeing them watching them when they're in the swamp.
Needless to say this scared the
out of the larger clan and they contacted the Wardens to try and solve the problem.This is where the PC's come in.
Anyhow, if you've made it though that wall of text here's my questions.
I need to think of a way for the small clan halflings to come across as weird and creepy but not outright hostile. My players tend to have itchy trigger fingers.
Also, I'm thinking of reskinning Kobolds to serve as grunt lizardmen. I need some minions. The slingers work, especially their special shots since it's easy enough to explain them as weird swamp ingredients. Swap the firepot for an acidpot maybe.
Do you see any problems with the plot so far? Like I said, it's my first time GMing D&D in a long while.
Anyhow, thanks for putting up with me. A big chunk of this is just me putting ideas to paper... or rather screen and seeing how they look typed out. I've got some time before the group will be back together so there's lots of time for tweaking.
*edit* oh and also, how much do you think a lot of difficult/challanging terrain would affect the group if they were being attacked by primarily ranged fighters? At least make it worth 100XP?
